The popular party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is under coordinated attack from the mainstream media for alleged Russian contacts, mainly directed against the 'German Center for Eurasian Studies', a NGO and it’s head Manuel Ochsenreiter. In an exclusive interview with FWM, Mr. Ochsenreiter points out that although the media have been researching the alleged connections for months, they can’t present the slightest evidence, and he exposes the driving forces behind the smear campaign.

Mr. Ochsenreiter, in middle of August, several mainstream newspapers launched a campaign against the AfD party, your “German Center for Eurasian Studies” and you personally. The whole tale is about Russian influence on the AfD and how your Center allegedly serves as an instrument in a pro-Russian European network. The German mainstream media have presented their research as a huge media scoop. Was that the case?

– What “research”? The whole story is devoid of any content – as per usual with this topic. Mainstream media doesn’t work with facts, it works with blurry allegations. Mainstream newspaper journalists are criticizing my assistance in organizing electoral and crisis observation missions on the territory of the former Soviet Union, activities the Center has been very open about. Some parliamentarians of the AfD party took part in missions in Ukraine, the two Donbass Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk and in the Republic of Artsakh [known as Nagorno-Karabakh] during the last years. Our mainstream media doesn’t like that, and that’s their whole story.

RTK, Kosovo's public broadcaster, has recently "disclosed" what it called a "network of Russian spies." Without any evidence whatsoever, it included the names of prominent journalists, civil society activists and professional military, predominantly ethnic Serbs. Sputnik Serbia spoke with several people who found themselves on the list.

The ceasefire in Syria entered into force on February 27th in accordance with the agreement reached between the Russian Federation and the United States of America following the meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry. The terrorist group “Al-Nusra” (a branch of Al-Qaeda) and the Islamic State were exempt from the agreement. With the truce not applying to these groups, the struggle against these terrorist structures has continued. It is estimated that since the beginning of the war in Syria (March 2011), more than 270,000 people have been killed. Once rebel forces in Syria had successfully taken control of large territories of the state, the last line of Syria’s defense fell back to Damascus, Latakia, and Aleppo. When terrorists seized Aleppo, Damascus’ resistance was close to collapsing.

The Results of Russian Support

At the last moment for Syria, the Russian Federation committed to a military intervention. In early September last year, the Russian army began operations against the terrorists in Syria and inflicted serious blows against terrorist units over the course of six months, thus turning the tide of the war. The Russian Air Force carried out more than 9,000 sorties and destroyed over 200 infrastructural objects of the terrorist organization known as the Islamic State. It should be noted that Syrian, Russian, Iranian, and Lebanese forces from Hezbollah have all participated together in the defense of Syria. If Russia had not come to support the Syrian Army, then by all estimates Syria would have lost the war to the jihadists. On this note let us recall how the US and its allies allegedly led the fight against Islamic State in Syria for months without any results. In reality, since the beginning of the conflict in Syria, the US and EU supported, trained, and armed malicious forces in the country and region as a whole, with the special role of financing terrorism played by the United Kingdom, France, as well as the American allies of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.

Seventeen days following the announcement of the ceasefire in Syria, Russian President Vladimir Putin took the decision to partially withdraw Russian armed forces from Syria with the justification that they had accomplished all of their established goals. However, a necessary number of soldiers and S-400 anti-air defense systems have remained at Russian air and naval bases in Syria. The focus in Syria has since shifted from military operations to the peace process in favor of which Russia had acted from the very beginning.